I’ve spent 12 years of my life as a full-time competition skydiver. I’ve won 4 world championship golds in formation skydiving, a team sport in which 4 (or 8) people build formations in freefall against the clock.

But this story isn’t about winning. It’s about losing over and over and over again. Losing to learn lessons that can’t be bought: how to manage your own mind, how to know when to push and when to let go, how to build deep belief and trust, and ultimately how to use pressure to create magic.

Biting Off More Than I Could Chew

The big inflection point in my professional skydiving career when “shit got real” was my first year with Arizona Airspeed in 2016. I had spent 3 years with the #2 team in the country, and had just been recruited to the #1 team. New position, new playbook, high caliber veteran teammates, and the responsibility of a world championship 8 months away. Everyone thinks they want to be the newest member with the biggest learning curve, but it is a whole different story to actually be one.

The season started well: beginner’s luck, freedom to follow intuition, unencumbered by knowledge and expectation. But then I started struggling. I would walk into a training camp light but couldn’t keep up the physical pace while carrying more and more technical content in my head. The approaching world meet and the intensity of my first summer in Arizona heat did not help. I was talented but my confidence was spiraling down the toilet. The more I struggled, the more confidence I lost and the more trust I eroded in my teammates.

I didn’t know just how much policing I had to exert over my mental space. As engineers we are taught to (a) dig into detail and (b) try harder. But that’s the exact antithesis of an optimal real-time human performance. I was over-extending my capacity to handle detail, misprioritizing information and getting in my own way.

When we’re at ease our mental capacity is quite broad. We’re able to carry extra content in our heads, like details for a new skill we’re learning. But under stress (time pressure, hunger, fatigue, lack of sleep) the capacity to perform and carry detail in our heads shrinks drastically.

My engineering, analytical, left-dominant brain is my enemy number one when it comes to sport and performance. Through the years I learned how to simplify-simplify-simplify and ruthlessly prioritize, especially under stress and fatigue.

Years later a teammate asked me what I was thinking during a particular jump. My reply: Nothing. I’m a fucking goldfish.

I wish I could tell you that I had a magical epiphany, that the demons dispersed and we won that world championship in 2016. That’s not at all what happened.

I wasn’t alone in my struggle. The team was feeling the stress, and pushing harder. We were white knuckling our way through the challenge and it backfired hard. One teammate broke his hand in training early summer. Then I broke mine a month before the world championships and sat out the meet. I’ve never felt more useless than sitting on the sidelines watching my team lose the world meet.

In a way I got lucky. The injury was ultimately a saving grace, an externally-forced rock bottom. It gave me an opportunity to reset. I had nothing else to lose, and I had my first major “Neo stopping bullets moment” at US Nationals just a month later, where I earned my keep and won my first national title.

Belief Can’t Be Faked, It Has To Be Built

What’s at the core of a peak performance? Unshakeable trust and belief in yourself and your teammates. And that belief can only be earned through effort and time.

My first world championship competition was in Australia in 2018. Airspeed had a challenging lineup, a lineup that needed a lot of maturing to do. The two junior members (myself included) were green and insecure. The leader was alone in his captainship and its weight. The remaining senior member didn’t believe in the lineup from the beginning.

We opened the meet with a nervous, rough, try-hard round 1. Behind the Belgian leader by 3 points by pace but lost 3 more points to infractions; 26 against 32. Being behind so far so soon freed us from the burden and we started performing, but that didn’t last long.

Round 4 was a fast sequence. A lot of points to be had in just one round, and large consequences for mistakes. Under the pressure I let myself tunnel vision into a detail, mistime the exit and end up on my back on the exit. It took us 4 seconds to score the first point (we only have 35 seconds for the round). The anger and freedom brought forth an unbelievable remainder of a dive, but the damage was done: 60 points against the opponent’s world record 62.

Despite the setbacks, we were still holding on, and closing the gap. Our opponent was choking and making unforced errors. And they knew it, avoiding eye contact in the airplane loading area. And little by little our belief grew.

We ended up tied after round 8. No one slept the night before round 9. And we tied again after round 9. We had momentum but weather rolled in and we were left to stew on it all for another night before round 10. The very experienced and confident Belgian opponent finally came back in their true form, and defeated us by 2 points in the final round.

The point is you can’t fake belief. We only performed when we were chasing the opponent (chasing is always easier than getting chased). We didn’t have the foundation to deliver in peak heat. And that’s enough to lose by the tiniest of margins (277 points against 279 points total over 10 rounds).

Coming so close only to fall short set the stage for our next failure.

Know When to Push and When to Let Go

After coming within inches of a world title, the expectations were now reset much higher. We were now the strong contenders and the pressure broke us. One of my teammates couldn’t handle it. Performance tanked. Tensions rose. Conflict escalated. And the team fractured that spring of 2019 with his departure.

We scrambled to find a replacement player to resuscitate the team. Trained super hard the remainder of summer. The fatal error? We never stopped pushing. We held the gas pedal down round by round of the US Nationals, struggling against a long-time 2nd place opponent who now had their shot to win in light of our weakness.

The feeling of falling behind or the feeling of time pressure. The feeling of running out of a dark basement or cave, feeling chased by an invisible monster. It is always a trap. Trying harder to catch up is never the solution. But we did.

We held the gas pedal down even when we needed to let it go and let the performance happen. We were over-driving an immature machine that couldn’t sustain the extra pace. And we lost the Nationals in a tie-breaker round 11.

Airspeed lost US Nationals for the first time in 14 years. And for what?

A mere 3 weeks later both teams met at the World Cup with the same lineups. But we learned our lesson and actively managed the throttle this time around, and won handily.

When the heat is on, and especially when you’re feeling behind, train yourself to take a breath and relax. That’s the only way.

You Win in Preparation

Fast forward to summer 2021. I am in Siberia, Russia with Team USA in 8-way (transfer of skill from my primary career in 4-way). The lineup is strong: two multiple time world champions driving the performance from the center, hungry and accomplished competitors in the ranks. But we are the underdogs. The youthful French team are super strong and have beaten us handedly earlier that spring. And we have a last minute substitute teammate due to an injury.

The race is super close. First 2 rounds tied. We lose round 3 by 3 points and lose another point in round 4. Down by 4. Everyone acts through the day and shows a strong front but we are angry inside.

Normally I take a light jog after a competition day to get rid of all the excess adrenaline and energy. Not that day. I sprint through the forest, with middle fingers in the air, yelling. I’ve been through entirely too much in the previous 2 years to lose now (lost US Nationals 2019 with Airspeed, took on a 2nd full-time team in 8-way while rebuilding the 4-way Airspeed team, plus everything COVID). And I wasn’t the only person with this experience. Everyone of us had a version of that angry sprint in the forest that night. It ain’t over ‘till it’s over.

And the following morning we channel that energy into round 5. Fast sequence, peak pressure, and an incredible jump. Pick up 5 points with a 31 against 26, putting us up by 1 point in the meet overall. We trade 2 points up and down in rounds 6 and 7 before the weather rolls in for good. And we sit on the ground with that +1 point advantage for 2 days before the clock runs out. A total of 166 points against 165. World Champions.

The difference between Australia and Siberia? The team in Siberia had true deep belief. We knew we were the underdogs going into the fight but we’ve earned our core belief in being able to throw a punch.

You can’t fake this and you can’t buy it in a store. You have to earn it. Earn it in your preparation.

No Magic Without Pressure

Airspeed had just come off a very successful trip to the World Cup in Norway in August 2023. A strong performance full of trust and intuitive flying. For the first time in a long time we delivered a powerful Round 1 without jitters and doubts, without using round 1 to test-and-see confidence. Two factors played into the success: the maturity of a team that was 4 years in and already a world champion once; and the natural heat gifted to us by a young French team chasing us from behind.

But US Nationals a month later was a different story. There was no pressure, we knew in our bones that we had no strong opponent at Nationals. But my teammate brought the same “relax into the heat” approach from the pressurized World Cup into unpressurized Nationals.

Round 1, fast sequence, lots of points on the table. And disaster. Lack of pressure plus a relaxed approach left him open to distractions. We struggled through the jump. We should have scored 60+ but only earned 43, losing to both remaining podium contenders.

Following the disastrous Round 1, I had spent the remainder of that first day at Nationals performing with anger. We put up some killer rounds but I hated it.

I hated it because I had spent a long middle chunk of my competition career using anger to push myself through my fears and insecurities and then to hold on and last long enough to get to the world championship goals I set out to achieve. (10 years in, I almost lost the timing lottery; some people win the timing lottery by entering the arena and becoming champions in short order; others run out of energy before ever getting a shot; I almost ran out before the fortunes turned.)

I worked hard to change my relationship to my sport to one of enjoyment and love, and I hated rolling back to anger just to get the job done. Anger, spite, pride, jealousy are all useful fuels, but they’re corrosive and only good in the short term.

Finding Joy in Peak Stress

That love and joy for your craft is the only lasting fuel. I can’t say if I ever finished my transformation to truly enjoying my craft again (I started this journey purely for the love and challenge of it as there was never any money or other extrinsic motivations in it). My body was beat up towards the end, a big distraction.

But I will say that my last world championship in North Carolina in 2024 was a truly magical experience. Round after round, the video shows me pumping fists after the jump is done. I goofed around and celebrated under parachute with my long-time teammate and partner with whom we rebuilt Airspeed in 2020.

And I’ll say this. Embrace and try to enjoy the moments of peak pressure, those moments that can be hardest and feel the worst. Those are the only moments you’ll remember — win or lose.